Sew cute!

Yeah, cheesy, I know! 😀  But I thought I’d share this idea for Mother’s day. If you have a mom or grandma who sews, you might try a group of these cookies for Mother’s Day. (And they don’t require very many special shapes!)

I made these for my sister a few months ago, and I was going to share them with you then, but now I’m kind of glad I waited because I think they’re a great Mother’s Day idea. (And that makes me feel better for not doing it earlier… so I’m going with it).

My sister Shannon is an amazing seamstress. She has sent me things she has made, and it blows me away. Sometimes she follows patterns, but sometimes she just makes stuff up! Like from nothing. Out of her head. Plus she has five kids and the oldest is 8. She’s amazing. So I made her some cookies.

I got my inspiration from Lisa the Bearfoot Baker. I think it was Sweet Sugarbelle who referenced these cookies a while back, and I thought they were so cute. So I took her ideas and added a few of my own and came up with this little group.

I used the second-largest rectangle from the Fox Run Rectangle set for the spools of thread.

I really wish I would have done some step-by-step photos of these. I still don’t think like a blogger, but I’m getting there! Anyway, I just drew the spools on the rectangles. I did a super simple design. I outlined and filled in the base of the spool with runny purple and green, and then let that dry. After it was dry, I went back and added stiffer lines over the top to make the individual “threads”. If you look closely, you’ll see that most of the color you see is actually the background solid-filled base, and there are relatively few thread lines on top.

The buttons were fast and easy. I just used an assortment of mini cutters– hearts, circles, flowers, stars– for the buttons.

Outlined, filled in, then added the rim and “thread” after the base was dry.  These are fun. I like buttons. 🙂

For the thimbles, I used the smallest oval in the Fox Run Oval set and cut a sliver off the bottom of each to make them flat on one side.

Woa. These are big pictures. You can see all my little mistakes.  Lucky you! 😀  I used gray icing (mostly Bright White coloring, with a teensy bit of Super Black). I made the whole thing smooth by outlining and filling in. After that was dry, I went back and added the lines and dots. When everything was completely dry, I brushed them with Nu Silver Luster Dust to make them look metallic. I thought they were pretty cute and super simple.

For the tomato pin cushion, I used the largest oval from the Fox Run set. I really wanted to come up with a different type of pin cushion for this set so that I wasn’t totally ripping off Lisa’s ideas. But I just kept coming back to it because it is so iconic! Every seamstress I’ve ever known has had the tomato pin cushion! So I just did my own take of the design:

I happened to have two different colors of red, so I used the darker one to outline and the lighter one to fill in. I liked how that looked, so made two different shades of green so I could do the same with the “stem” (only opposite– outline with lighter, fill in with darker). My green and red kind of reacted to each other. I might have done the green before the red was dry enough. I was sad that they got kind of yucky looking. But it still worked ok.  I did the pins with gray icing and brushed them with the Nu Silver after they dried.

Then  made a little sign to put with them:

This cookie got a little funky on the bottom. Sometimes they do that!

I boxed them all up and sent them across a couple of states.

I thought it made a cute little set. I also included a bag full o’ button cookies. I sent these in February during a super cold snap (20 below zero!), and they got pretty messed up in shipment. They turned blotchy, and I’m sure it’s because they froze so hard. I was sad about that. I’m not sure how to avoid that in the future– maybe I could have insulated the box better or something. Anyway, live and learn.

But now it’s May! So it probably won’t freeze, so you should make these and send them to your mom (or grandma or sister or friend or cousin)!

Sew cute!

I really wanted to give away some Oval cookie cutter sets with this post, but we are sold out!! I’m hoping to have some more soon, and we can revisit this post, along with some other fun uses for the oval cutters.

Have a happy Monday!